


You put those people together, you can't expect what's going to happen

by I Have Made a Terrible Mistake (LizbethAnne)



Series: Maria wins the Hunger Games (no one wins the Hunger Games) [1]
Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, Marvel (Comics)
Genre: AU, Crapsack World, Everything is terrible, Fusion, Multi, You Have Been Warned, all the characters appear in this work, but most of them die
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-04
Updated: 2014-04-16
Packaged: 2018-01-11 03:04:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1167893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizbethAnne/pseuds/I%20Have%20Made%20a%20Terrible%20Mistake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maria volunteers for the Games, and comes out alive. But it's like Fury tells her later, after it's too late to make a difference: there are no winners, only survivors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Volunteer

Maria volunteers, because it’s her job. She’s trained for this since she was a child—everyone in Two trains, of course. You don’t become a mason or a Peacekeeper if you’re weak, but the best and brightest and bravest are chosen for special training. There’s always several eligible volunteers of each gender—best not to pin your hopes on a kid who breaks his arm or gets the flu the day before the Reaping—but Maria has known she was destined to Volunteer from the beginning, and this is her last chance.

She’s surprised when Jasper joins her onstage (only slightly more surprised than he looks)—it must have been a last minute decision. He wasn’t her first choice for an ally, but he’s competent enough, and importantly, she could beat him if she needed to. Maria waves to her father from the stage (it’s not as if he’ll willingly come to see her off) as they’re escorted into separate rooms in the Mayor’s home to await the train.

Maria barely has a moment to examine the room (no windows, one door—Two’s never had someone run away after the reaping, but they’re not taking any chances) before Fury barges in.

“Hill, right?” he asks  
“Yes, sir,” she responds, trying very hard to look anywhere but his eyepatch. (Later that night, she’ll realize that he didn’t know her name, he must have missed the reaping, and wonder what that means.) Fury cuts an imposing figure, even among the uniformly strong people of Two—tall and broad, dressed all in black, with an eyepatch that doesn’t do much to hide the scarring around his eye socket.  
He laughs a little at that, and it does absolutely nothing to make him less terrifying. “You can drop the ‘sir,’ Hill. Fury’s fine.” Maria’s pretty sure he wasn’t named Fury before the games, but it’s not like she remembers a time before Fury was Two’s star Victor, and she definitely wasn’t going to ask him. “I’ll be mentoring the both of you this year.”

There’s a twitch in the skin around his eyepatch as he says that. Two had lost two Victors in the past year—Dugan, who’d gotten ill, and old Carter. People said she’d died of heartbreak, a month after young Carter lost her Games (Sharon wouldn’t have lost, the rumors said, if she hadn’t allied herself with someone more popular with sponsors than she was. The mutts that attacked them went straight for her, and after Sharon died screaming parachutes had rained down on the young man with the beautiful blue eyes. He’d died two days later, in a river that had gone from two feet and gentle to twenty feet filled with chunks of ice in seconds). That was the romantic version. Everyone else said she’d killed herself, that after losing so many tributes, losing her niece was too much to bear. Carter had been one of the oldest living Victors, after all, it made sense that she’d be tired of it.

Jasper’s still saying goodbye to his family in the other room when Maria and Fury head to the train. He’s noticeably reluctant to leave them, and Maria can see the Peacekeepers escorting them exchange looks over her head. It’s a relief when Jasper starts to detangle himself from his mother’s arms and they can head to the train.

Dinner is a mostly silent affair. Their escort seems to enjoy the feast more than the rest of them, but that’s to be expected. She’s probably not thinking about killing people.

After dinner, Fury gathers her and Jasper together to watch the rebroadcast of the other Reapings, and they get their first look at their competition.

District 1 is pretty standard this year. The girl, Kit, is a volunteer who has clearly chosen her outfit to look as much like one of Marvel’s tour costumes as possible for someone without a stylist. Arcade is onscreen fawning over how “inspirational” Marvel has been to the girls of 1, speaking for so long that Maria doesn’t even hear the boy tribute’s name. He seems fit though, and she’s already considering them both as allies. It's expected that 1 and 2 will partner, and it's almost a relief to slot them into a mental box marked "ally" and save her energy for cataloging her other competition. 

Her own face is on screen next, and the announcers mention how she’s one of the oldest tributes this year (good) and how Two always has such good volunteers. They aren’t as excited about Jasper--he’s relatively unimposing, not especially attractive--and she can see that he’s already worried. Fury claps him on the shoulder, mutters “don’t worry, you’ll show ‘em in evaluations”. Jasper doesn’t look convinced.

District 3’s tributes are the first not to volunteer: Alex, the brother of a girl who’d died horribly two years ago, and Tong, who doesn’t look like much of a threat. There are crying siblings clutching at both of them as they walk to the stage. Alex looks furious and just glares as his escort, glares at his mentor, glares at the camera. There’s no point in allying with someone who will get no sponsors, no matter how physically fit they may be. Maria moves him into a mental box labeled “dangerous”, moves Tong into “disregard”. 

District 4 is uneventful--two volunteers, who walk calmly to the stage. They’ll probably be middle of the pack, evaluation wise. Four usually does well because they’ve got skills no one else has (Maria’s never even seen a body of water deeper than a puddle in real life) and because they can get literally everything available to the sponsors, since their mentor is widely known as the most popular Victor. Maria adds them to a “probable ally” box.

District 5 provides plenty for Arcade to discuss. The male tribute is, quite frankly, one of the most beautiful people Maria’s ever seen, and he’s the Mayor’s son besides. Warren looks well fed, at least, and doesn’t cry when his name is called--he gets added to the “maybe” box. When Wanda is called, there’s a commotion, and a boy is being physically restrained from rushing the stage. “Too bad he was so slow!” Arcade titters in the studio. “It’s such a shame he’ll have to wait until next year to volunteer for the boys!”  
Maria glances at Fury when Arcade starts babbling on about Five’s escort’s outfit and they cut completely from Five to the studio. The boy wasn’t volunteering. “I wouldn’t ally with Five this year,” Fury says with a shrug in her direction. “They don’t look like they would last long.”  
There's an undercurrent to his tone that Maria catches, and it has her on edge. Five goes into the "dangerous" box.

There’s no point in even watching the piece on District 6. The only difference from last year’s reaping is that the escort has finally wised up and worn some sort of waterproof dress, so when the mentor staggers to the stage, trips, lands with his hands on her chest, and throws up, the escort stays relatively clean. They don’t even show the tributes’ names being called, just show small images of them at the lower corners of the screen. Maria’s fairly certain that they weren’t going to be her allies, regardless, but a full-body shot would have been useful.

Arcade is still giggling over Wade’s antics when they cut to District 7. Both tributes seem relatively prepared--they don’t volunteer, but volunteers are rare in the non-career districts. They go in the “maybe” box. 

District 8 has one of the youngest mentors--he’s still within the Reaping age, and Arcade mentions that both tributes had been in school with him. Maria wonders if knowing the tributes will help or hurt. The boy (named Flash, proving that it’s not just District 1 with the odd names) looks strong, and is bigger than Parker when he takes his place on stage. He’s definitely a potential ally. The girl is smaller, with bright red hair and a smile that will definitely help her with sponsors. Arcade, from the studio, this it’s the best team 8 has had in years, more balanced than a few years ago when Peter's fellow tribute held him back. 8 gets filed under "probable ally".

District 9 focuses mainly on the female tribute, Ava, who's the younger sister of a Victor that 9 had lost a few years ago. Arcade has less to say about the male tribute, other than to make a corny joke about his name being Victor. Both of them look strong, Ava perhaps especially so. Maria puts her on the "probable" list, puts Victor on the "maybe". She wonders how well they'll work together (tributes aren't always allies within the district), especially since she can see Victor refusing to shake his mentor's hand in the background. Could be tension there.

10 is always a coin toss-- some years, they have volunteers who tear the rest of the field apart on their own, and some years they have kids picked at random who fail horribly. This year they've got two volunteers, and they're clearly in the "dangerous" box. Both of 10's mentors had allied themselves with other tributes, only to kill them in their sleep (mostly--Natasha hadn't killed her ally from 12, but she surely didn't run back to help him when he ran out of arrows when the mutts were after them). 

District 11 reaps a young girl with dark hair who looks entirely too terrified to head up to the stage. When she finally stands next to her mentor, Maria can see that she's mumbling something under her breath. Old Logan pats her on the head kindly (as kindly as he looks capable of, at least), and the camera cuts to the large young man who's been reaped. He bounds up to the stage, leans over to the escort's microphone and says, "Call me Glob," before standing on Logan's other side.  
Jasper turns to her, with a look of bewilderment on his face. "Eleven's a no, right?"  
All she can do is nod. 

By the time they get to 12's reaping, Arcade has clearly run out of new ways to describe the Tributes, and Maria finds herself stifling a yawn. 12's tributes are a decently strong looking boy named Ken and a slight girl named Jennifer. 12 is so rarely a big player in the games--they lose a lot in the cornucopia, they rarely get sponsors--that Maria's pretty sure she won't need to deal with them directly. Still, she watches them, catalogs the way they both glance at each other (he when she's not looking, her through her hair like she thinks she's stealthy). They go in a box marked "irrelevant".

Arcade announces that the preliminary odds have already been decided, for betting purposes. They'll of course be revised throughout the days before the game, but many gamblers like to get their claims in early. Maria’s pleased to see that she gets good odds—Two’s kids always have good odds, of course, and volunteering increases the chance of becoming a Victor by some measurable statistic. She carries herself well, too. She may not be the strongest competitor, but there’s a confidence in the way she carries herself that bodes well for her chances in the arena.

As soon as Arcade signs off, Fury stands and heads for the door of the compartment. "Sleep on it. We'll regroup in the morning, discuss who you think you should work with, and then I'll tell you who you should work with."


	2. Strategizing

Maria wakes early the next morning, and heads to the dining car right away. They’ve never exactly gone hungry in Two, but she knows she’s going to need every advantage in the arena. Going in well fed, with energy and a few extra pounds, can only be helpful. (The year that Hank from Four won there had been no food in the arena--the cameras never showed how he managed to stay alive and energetic for so long, when all the other tributes grew weaker and weaker each day.)

Jasper and Fury are already at the table when she arrives. She’s come in on Fury’s bad side, and he has to turn to see her. “Sit down,” he says, gesturing towards a seat next to Jasper that’s in his sight line.

Maria helps herself to a plateful of food, and has made a sizable dent in it when Jasper starts to shift in his seat. “Are we discussing allies?”

He’s nervous--so is she, of course, nothing is ever guaranteed in the Games. She knows she has a chance, a better than average one, but you never know what will be in the Arena (deserts, mountains, oceans) or what the gamemakers will come up with (the mutts seem smarter every year) or what the other Tributes will do (two years ago, a girl from 11 had accidentally lit the last five tributes on fire, including herself--and if Johnny from 3 hadn’t killed the other four while he was literally engulfed in flames, there wouldn’t have been a Victor that year). 

Still, though. Jasper volunteered for this, the same as she did. It’s a concern that he seems so nervous.

“You’re working with One, Nine and Four assuming they’re cooperative, and you’ll avoid Eleven completely,” Fury says. “Any questions?”  
“What about Eight?” Maria asks. She’d placed them as high as Nine and Four, and now she wonders if she missed something crucial.  
Fury pauses for a moment, taking time to chew a few forkfuls of food. “Eight is dealing with an inexperienced Mentor. And, while they look fit, Eight doesn’t have any specialized training. If it comes down to limited options, or the situation changes in the arena, you can consider it.”  
“The guy from Twelve looked strong,” Jasper says cautiously.   
“Yes, but strong doesn’t mean shit when it comes from Twelve. They don’t grow up like you do.” Fury is practically rolling his eye in exasperation. “Did you see the girl? She’ll be useless, and if they’re allies, you’ve linked yourself to dead weight.”  
Maria nods. It makes sense. “Why avoid Eleven, sir?”  
Fury chuckles, and it is terrifying. “Because I said so, Hill. You’ll avoid Eleven because they aren’t a threat, and wasting time on them won’t win you any points. Someone else will probably deal with them early.”

Maria knows, objectively, what ‘deal with’ means. She knew, when she volunteered, exactly how she would have to get home, she knew exactly what she was being trained for. Still, there’s a drop in her gut at Fury’s words. Twenty three people, including the boy in the room with her, would need to be ‘dealt with’. 

Maria squashes that feeling. She can’t afford it right now (or ever), and therefore it needs to stop immediately. She wasn’t raised to believe in frivolity and there’s no need to start now. She’ll handle this, because she has to.

**Author's Note:**

> So I was on Tumblr, spitballing about how Maria would definitely win the Games. And it escalated into this. Fair warning, there will be a lot of death. A LOT. I envision a few chapters about the actual games (my desire to write about Maria killing other kids is low?) and then this will turn into "Maria leads the goddamn rebellion".


End file.
